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Every day you have a choice. You can wake up and choose to give in to mediocrity and complacency, you can choose bad habits and poor choices, and you can do the bare minimum to get by and fly under the radar. Or you can choose to make today the day that sets you apart from the crowd, you can choose to start doing the right things, the things that will set you up for success. You can choose to create a life that is worth living, worth waking up to, and worth sharing with the world around you. Today You can choose to start with a win.
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Speaker 2
You can't buy engagement. Engagement has to be designed into the product,
00:00:04:17 - 00:00:08:11
Speaker 2
basically the advice is will stop using technology, stop checking email.
00:00:08:13 - 00:00:13:19
Speaker 2
Thanks, stupid. That's nice for you to say because you've got tenure. But most of us would get fired if we stopped using these tools.
00:00:13:19 - 00:00:19:10
Speaker 2
So step number one is to master internal triggers or they will become your master.
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Unknown
Welcome to start with a win where we unpack franchising, leadership and business growth. Let's go.
00:00:26:22 - 00:01:04:21
Speaker 1
Coming to you from area 15 ventures and start with a win. Headquarters, it's Adam Contos with. Start with a win. Are you ready to crack the code and building habits that stick and regaining control over your attention? Those are two of my biggest problems today. I'll start with a win. We're in for a treat as we sit down with near L, a true guru at the intersection of psychology, technology and business with a background that spans teaching at the Stanford Graduate School of Business to founding and selling tech companies, nears insights have earned him the title The Profit of Habit Forming Technology.
00:01:04:23 - 00:01:17:14
Speaker 1
He's the author of two bestselling books, Hooked and In Distractible, which have not only resonated with readers globally, but have also been hailed as game changers in understanding human behavior in the digital age.
00:01:17:14 - 00:01:28:03
Speaker 1
So if you're eager to learn about how to craft products and habits that keep users coming back for more and reclaim your focus in the distracted world you're in for a treat.
00:01:28:04 - 00:01:30:18
Speaker 1
Nir, welcome to start with a win.
00:01:30:21 - 00:01:33:01
Speaker 2
Thank you so much. I appreciate you having me.
00:01:33:03 - 00:01:51:04
Speaker 1
Hey, I am so fascinated by these two topics of the habits portion of this and the book you wrote about that. And then in Distractible, I think that is truly a cool thing to think about, especially in this day and age. But let's jump into habits first. I, I think our listeners really would love to hear about this.
00:01:51:04 - 00:02:09:15
Speaker 1
I've talked about habits in the past. You know, James Clear had this awesome book on atomic habits. And, you know, Charles Duhigg and some of these others that we've really delved into. But you've truly done a lot of research on this, and I want to hear your take on it. So first of all, tell us what's a habit and why should we care about this?
00:02:09:17 - 00:02:25:07
Speaker 2
Yeah. So a habit is defined as an impulse to do a behavior with little or no conscious thought. It's about half of what you do every single day, day in and day out is spurred by these unconscious impulses to do things without really thinking about them. So when you learn to drive a car, right at first you're white knuckling it.
00:02:25:07 - 00:02:44:03
Speaker 2
You're really nervous. You're thinking about every little thing you're doing. But then as you get more proficient as that habit is formed, you can do all kinds of things as you're driving, right? You could talk to the person next to you, you can listen to a podcast, maybe this one. You could do all kinds of things because you've been put on autopilot, because those behaviors that you learned are something you can do with little or no conscious thought.
00:02:44:09 - 00:03:01:16
Speaker 2
So if we can harness those habits, then we can have them serve us in many ways. And of course, if we are not careful or we can have bad habits, which then we end up serving. So my work in my first book was really about how to build habit forming products, which is different from, I think, you know, anybody else out there in that.
00:03:01:16 - 00:03:21:04
Speaker 2
It's not exactly about personal habits, like I studied personal habits quite a bit, but that's not the focus of my research in my writing. It's really about how can we build products and services to help people build healthy habits in their lives. So if you think about Duolingo, one of my early clients use the hook model to get people hooked to learning a language online.
00:03:21:06 - 00:03:43:06
Speaker 2
Fitbit is a company that was designed from the ground up, using the hooked model to get people hooked to fitness and exercise. So in every conceivable industry, from enterprise SaaS software to education to fintech, all kinds of products rely upon bringing customers back. And if they can't bring them back, if they can't build a habit, well, that business is sunk and the customer doesn't benefit.
00:03:43:08 - 00:03:58:00
Speaker 1
Okay, so you mentioned the hook model a couple times and the book, is titled hook. So, I mean, explain to us what is the hook model? It's I my understanding is it's a multi-step process. And I'd like to dive into those steps if you could.
00:03:58:04 - 00:04:13:02
Speaker 2
Sure. Yeah. So the book is hooked. How to build habit forming products. And it does exactly what it what is promised in the title. There. It's about how do you get people hooked for good. It's about healthy habits and people's lives. And and just to back up, you know, the the title is a little bit, controversial, right?
00:04:13:02 - 00:04:42:21
Speaker 2
It's meant to get your attention calling it hooked. And of course, you know, the idea here is that I stole the secrets of Silicon Valley, right? I didn't write this book for Facebook and, Google and Amazon. They already know these techniques. The gaming companies, they already know how to do this stuff. What I wanted to do was to steal their secrets so that we could democratize the psychology of engagement, so that all kinds of businesses out there can use the same exact psychology that keeps you checking your phone for frivolity, that we can use the same psychology for good.
00:04:42:21 - 00:05:04:19
Speaker 2
And so that's that's really the point of the book. There's a section in the book about the morality of manipulation as well, to make sure that we're on the right ethical side of using these techniques. But just to walk through 30,000ft level of what is the hooked model? The hooked model is a design experience to connect your users problem with your product, with enough frequency to form a habit.
00:05:04:20 - 00:05:29:16
Speaker 2
Now the key word there is frequency. so I've been an active angel investor for, well over 15 years, invested in six unicorns, 35 companies total. And so my job is to look at where I can find opportunities where the fulcrum of success is building a customer habit, where the business lives or dies based on how good it can reduce customer churn by forming a long term habit.
00:05:29:18 - 00:05:48:01
Speaker 2
and so what I look for is that they have a hook model in the business, in the user experience. And so that hook model is composed of these four steps. The first step is called the trigger phase. Now there are two kinds of triggers. We have external triggers. And these are the usual suspects the pings, the dings the rings.
00:05:48:03 - 00:06:05:17
Speaker 2
Anything in your outside environment that tells you what to do with some piece of information. That's called the external trigger. There's another kind of trigger. Where you going to get back to you in just a second. So you've got those external triggers, those things in your environment. Maybe it's a notification on your phone. The next step in the hook model is the action phase.
00:06:05:19 - 00:06:26:13
Speaker 2
The action phase is defined as the simplest behavior done in anticipation of a reward opening an app, scrolling a feed, checking a dashboard. These very simple behaviors done anticipation of an immediate reward. And of course, the rule here is the first rule of interaction design. The easier something is to do, the more likely people are to do it.
00:06:26:16 - 00:06:50:15
Speaker 2
And so that's where we really focus on minimizing friction to get people to the reward phase as quickly as possible. The reward phase is the third step of the hook model. This is where the itch is scratch where the user gets what they came for. But it's not good enough just to give people what they came for. What we find is endemic to all habit forming products is that they have what's called a variable reward, some kind of what's called an intermittent reinforcement.
00:06:50:15 - 00:07:06:13
Speaker 2
So if you, look back at the work of B.F. Skinner, the father of operant conditioning, he did these beautiful experiments where he took these pigeons, he put them in a box. Today we call this a Skinner box. And he allowed these pigeons to peck at a disc to get a little reward. A little food tray. Yeah, a food pellet.
00:07:06:15 - 00:07:21:09
Speaker 2
And so every time the pigeon was hungry, by the way, the pigeon had to be hungry. Just like with our customers. We can't make them do things. They have to have this this internal trigger, this desire. But as long as the pigeons were hungry, they would peck at the disc and get a reward. Great. That's called operant conditioning.
00:07:21:11 - 00:07:41:06
Speaker 2
If you have a pet at home, you've probably conditioned their behavior this way. If you have kids at home, you probably conditioned their behavior this way as well. The idea is, you know, you do something, you get a reward, no big deal. But then one day, Skinner walked into his lab and he had a problem. He checked his pocket and he realized he didn't have enough of these food treats, so he couldn't afford to give these little food pellets every single time.
00:07:41:08 - 00:08:00:21
Speaker 2
He could only afford to give it to the pigeon once in a while. So sometimes a pigeon would peck at the disc. Nothing would happen. The next time the pigeon would to peck at the disc, they would receive a reward. And what Skinner found was that the rate of response a number of times these pigeons pecked at the disc, increased when the reward was given on a variable schedule of reinforcement.
00:08:00:23 - 00:08:18:21
Speaker 2
So this is really the engine of the hook model in all kinds of habit forming experiences. Online, offline, enterprise, consumer web doesn't matter. You will find this element of mystery, right? What makes a book interesting? It's about what's going to happen next. Why do we watch sports? Who cares about some stupid ball bouncing around? It's all about uncertainty.
00:08:18:21 - 00:08:36:06
Speaker 2
What's going to happen? What makes gambling so habit forming if not addictive? This is the same thing we do. Pulling on a slot machine is the same thing we do when we scroll that feed. It's all about uncertainty, variability. What's going to happen next. That's really the engine of every habit forming product. Finally, the last step of the hook model.
00:08:36:06 - 00:08:52:13
Speaker 2
And you can see where this is very different from, you know, Charles Duhigg or James Clear, who focuses on big fans of them, but they focus on personal habits. There's not that element of variability. There's not that element of what I'm going to tell you next, which is the investment phase, a habit forming product has to ask for investment.
00:08:52:13 - 00:09:13:20
Speaker 2
Now, what is investment? If you think about the history of manufacturing, it was always about the, the least amount of customization that the company could get away with, right? That if you think about Henry Ford, he said famously, you can have any color of model T as long as it's black. Why? Because it was really hard back then to make a blue car in a red car and a green car.
00:09:13:22 - 00:09:41:12
Speaker 2
Well, today we can do that. But we push that really to the extreme when it comes to habit forming products in that, especially these ones online. When you think about TikTok and Facebook and Instagram, all these products are customized on a mass scale. It's mass personalization. So your experience, they've designed the product for a market size of one based on your investment in the product because unlike physical goods, right, your car, your couch, your clothing, those things depreciate with wear and tear.
00:09:41:12 - 00:10:03:01
Speaker 2
They lose value. Habit forming products appreciate. They get better and better the more they use them. This is what I call stored value. So the more data you give a company, the more content you upload, the more followers, of you and you follow others. You're customizing the product, you're improving it based on your preferences. That's the investment phase.
00:10:03:01 - 00:10:20:20
Speaker 2
And it's critical. It's the most overlooked of the four steps of the hook model, so that eventually, through successive cycles, through the hook, the way we know a habit is formed is that you don't need those external triggers at all. If you think about it, 90% of the time that people check their phone, it's not because of a ping ding a ring.
00:10:20:21 - 00:10:41:18
Speaker 2
It's because of what's called an internal trigger. What's an internal trigger? I told you, I get back to it earlier. It's an uncomfortable emotional state boredom, loneliness, fatigue, anxiety. That is, when we know a habit is formed, is when the user doesn't need any kind of spammy messaging or annoying notifications. They use the product on their own, with little or no conscious thought, purely out of habit.
00:10:41:18 - 00:10:44:05
Speaker 2
So that's the four steps of the hook model.
00:10:44:07 - 00:11:01:16
Speaker 1
So we have trigger action. The variable reward variable is really important in this folks. And then we have the investment. take me through a common consumer product that we're all used to that might integrate these different things. And give us the example of how that works.
00:11:01:18 - 00:11:09:11
Speaker 2
Sure, sure. So let's let's take a risk here. Let's, let's talk about a product that you're habituated to. What's something that you use throughout your day, little or no conscious thought.
00:11:09:13 - 00:11:11:00
Speaker 1
Coffee.
00:11:11:02 - 00:11:34:20
Speaker 2
Coffee. Okay. All right. There's, okay. Well, how about your coffee machine? That's probably a little bit more, used to that, right? So physical products, have an advantage of the fact that the external trigger is a physical manifestation, right? You see it every morning. So the external trigger is, hey, there's my coffee machine. The action is to start making the coffee.
00:11:35:02 - 00:11:54:16
Speaker 2
The variable reward, I would argue with coffee is how it makes you feel. Right. There's a little bit of variability if you don't make it the exact same right way. And in fact, that's when you find people get bored of their coffee. That's when they look for a new brand, a new kick, a new, you know, every other day there's some new coffee shop that opens up nearby that's doing your coffee just a little bit different with the frappe, a mocha or whatever.
00:11:54:22 - 00:12:11:04
Speaker 2
There's variability there because that first sip tastes a little bit different, right? Based on how you made it, there's a little bit of variability there. And then finally the investment is the fact that, hey, you had this coffee machine in your house, you put it there. And so now that loads the next trigger to bring you back once again.
00:12:11:04 - 00:12:30:04
Speaker 2
Now it doesn't store value really well. But what we see is that there are companies today that actually are using the hook model to change people's habits around something like coffee. That's more than just, hey, I bought this coffee machine, so I'm going to use it again. And again. there's, there's a company that I saw recently that is kind of like a coffee of the month club and coffee.
00:12:30:04 - 00:12:47:01
Speaker 2
The month clubs have come and gone. They don't really do all that well. But this business is very unique in that they send you a scale. It's a tiny scale. It's about the size of a coaster. And when they send you coffee, they ask you, please put that bag of coffee on this scale, keep it there at all times.
00:12:47:01 - 00:13:06:15
Speaker 2
Now what does that do? Every time you make a cup of coffee, you are sending the company data on how quickly you are consuming that coffee and so that becomes the investment. The investment of data stores value because it personalizes the experience. So they say, oh wow, you're drinking this coffee really fast. We're going to send you the coffee.
00:13:06:15 - 00:13:18:04
Speaker 2
Not based on, you know, what day of the month it is. Because the biggest problem with the coffee of the month club is, oh, I had some guests over and they all wanted coffee. Now I'm out or I didn't really like that brand. And so now I have too much. But now I have another bag of coffee just sitting here.
00:13:18:08 - 00:13:35:10
Speaker 2
They will load the next trigger. They will send you that next based a bag of coffee based on how quickly you consume the last one. And so they shape your brand and they know, oh, you, you really must have liked that one. You drank it very quickly. We're going to send you we're going to recommend here are five potential, roasts that are similar to that one.
00:13:35:10 - 00:13:41:04
Speaker 2
Which one do you think you want to try next. So again they're using this data to improve the experience with use.
00:13:41:06 - 00:13:46:04
Speaker 1
Wow. So we're really I mean this is all about user psychology right.
00:13:46:05 - 00:14:05:05
Speaker 2
Oh it's 100% consumer psychology. That's right. And by the way this is one small part of consumer psychology. So my specialty is in all consumer psychology. The book hooked is really about one facet which is habit forming products which by the way not every business needs to have. Right. There are plenty of companies out there that don't build customer habits, specifically products that are not used frequently.
00:14:05:09 - 00:14:26:09
Speaker 2
Right? Car insurance, for example, you don't use car insurance on a daily basis. That's fine. The problem is, if you don't have a habit, you damn well better have some kind of other competitive advantage what Warren Buffett calls a moat. So that could be economies of scale. It could be intellectual property. Habits are an amazing habit. our amazing, competitive advantage, because they are so hard to break.
00:14:26:09 - 00:14:45:05
Speaker 2
So think about Google, for example. Right. Google owns what 8,090% of the search engine market is it because they have a better search engine? No. Yeah. We've done head to head comparisons where we show people the search results between Google and Bing, the number two search engine. And if you strip out the branding and you ask people which search results are better, it's a 5050 preference split.
00:14:45:05 - 00:15:02:15
Speaker 2
People can't tell the difference. And yet Google owns 8,090% of the search engine market. Why? Because we don't even give the competition a chance. This is what's so powerful about a habit is that when you have a consumer habit, when people are doing something with little or no conscious thought, they don't think to themselves, I wonder if the competition is better.
00:15:02:15 - 00:15:10:18
Speaker 2
I wonder who makes the better search engine. No, we google it with little or no conscious thought. And so that's why it's such so, so powerful from a business standpoint.
00:15:10:20 - 00:15:36:04
Speaker 1
So how you know let's say you sell hamburgers or something like that, you know, and and you have a customer loyalty program. How does the and I understand, you know, customer loyalty programs give you coupons. They try to stimulate your desire for product whatever. How does that fit into this? Is that is that part of habit forming or, you know, creating a hook for people or a trigger or something like that?
00:15:36:06 - 00:15:55:09
Speaker 2
How how do I it can. So there's three remember we talked about those variable rewards. So there's three kinds of variable rewards. We have rewards. The tribe rewards the hunt and rewards of the self. What you're describing when it comes to coupons and points and loyalty programs. That's the rewards of the hunt. It's about the search for material or information rewards.
00:15:55:14 - 00:16:14:23
Speaker 2
So giving people coupons works. It works. But it's the lazy person's approach, right? It's the lazy CMO who needs to juice some sales for the quarter. And they said, okay, well, let's give people some coupons that will work. There is variability there, right? Oh, what's the coupon going to get me. Right. What's the program. You see all kinds of, you know, scratch and wind type of things.
00:16:15:03 - 00:16:29:23
Speaker 2
Very nice. Fine. The problem is that comes straight out of your bottom line, right? If you give people a discount, you're going to have what what I call the bed bath and beyond the fact, you know, bed bath and beyond, I think they recently went bankrupt. Right. They send you coupons all the or they did. I don't know what they're doing now.
00:16:29:23 - 00:16:50:22
Speaker 2
I think they might be, going out of business for this very reason. Like when I lived in the States, I would literally have a bed, Bath and Beyond coupon in my mailbox every single day. Like, if you shop there, you were an idiot. If you didn't bring a coupon, they would have coupons all over the place. And so what they did was they trained their consumer to always expect a discount.
00:16:50:22 - 00:17:22:04
Speaker 2
Right. So what you do more of if you use this hook model, you're going to habituate people to whatever you run them through. And so people started expecting these coupons. And so what do they do. They attracted a bunch of cheapskates right. That's what they did. Right. And so that came straight out of the bottom line as opposed to if you're if we think a little bit outside the box, if we ask ourselves what are other types of variable rewards that are non-economic incentives, for example, rewards of the tribe bringing people together, having some kind of social element rewards the hunt when it comes to information rewards right where it's.
00:17:22:04 - 00:17:47:12
Speaker 2
It's the hunt for new information that can be a variable reward rewards the self when it comes to, mastery completion, competency control. There's this whole other book of, of, of, techniques that we can use around consumer psychology to bring people back that are not monetary incentives. They're designed incentives. But of course, people get very lazy because you can always juice growth, right?
00:17:47:12 - 00:18:07:16
Speaker 2
You pay for some advertising, you pay Facebook, you pay a television station, you pay for a billboard. That's easy. I know how to do that. That's a line item, right? You can't buy engagement. You can't buy engagement. Engagement has to be designed into the product, which is why it's a bit more difficult for people. They have to be a little bit more creative to actually build it into the user experience.
00:18:07:18 - 00:18:19:21
Speaker 1
Wow. I mean, talk to me about long term engagement then. I mean, as far as how do we retain a customer? Because when you reduce churn, lifetime value goes up. If a customer is there a way we can take a look at for that?
00:18:19:23 - 00:18:37:08
Speaker 2
Absolutely. So that's what it's all about right. You know, we know that, keeping a customer has a much higher, higher ROI than acquiring a new customer. But of course, you know, in business we don't really like that. We feel like, well, if somebody doesn't like our product and they churned out, they then must not be a good fit.
00:18:37:08 - 00:18:56:03
Speaker 2
No, we've got to hold on to that customer, with all our might, because it's so much less expensive than acquiring a brand new customer. And so how do we do that? We do that by making sure that the hooks work. So the hook is a diagnostic tool. So if you're finding that you know what, people just aren't coming back to my product like I think they should.
00:18:56:03 - 00:19:11:02
Speaker 2
I mean it's benefiting them. And yet they're not using it, right? They don't they don't. They're not building a habit around it. You can take out the hook model and you can say, okay, well where is it deficient? It becomes a diagnostic tool. Do we have good external triggers that are appropriately timed? Do we identify the internal trigger?
00:19:11:02 - 00:19:31:11
Speaker 2
Does everybody on the team understand what we are really serving here? You know you think your product has some whiz bang solution. But really what it is is the same thing that every product or service does. Every product you use, you use for only one reason. The reason you use every product or service is always to modulate your mood, to feel something different.
00:19:31:13 - 00:19:55:03
Speaker 2
So you are just selling a product. Sorry, you are selling a feeling disguised as a product. I don't care what business you're in, you're selling a feeling disguised as a product. Whether it's I feel bored, I feel lonely, I feel uncertain, I feel stressed. People come to you to change how they feel. And so if you can't tell me what is your internal trigger, what is that frequently occurring emotional itch?
00:19:55:05 - 00:20:10:12
Speaker 2
You're just flying blind. You're just getting lucky. So you've got to be able to articulate that. Then the action phase right is the key behavior. Is the habit. Easy to do and can you make it easier. And there's all kinds of ways we can do that. Then the variable reward is the reward actually rewarding? Does it scratch the user's itch?
00:20:10:17 - 00:20:28:08
Speaker 2
And then finally, are you asking for the investment that improves the product with use? And so every company I've worked with over my 15 years of, of studying this, there's always it's I can't say that there's one problem that applies to all businesses. It's that, you know, we'll we'll look through the hook model and they'll say, oh, I see okay, that's it.
00:20:28:10 - 00:20:36:19
Speaker 2
The action phase is too hard, or we're not asking for the right investment or we haven't picked the right internal trigger. And so that's really the power of, of this framework.
00:20:36:21 - 00:21:01:07
Speaker 1
Interesting. So I want to jump over to indestructible now. Sure. Because there are some parallel, you know, concepts here, particularly the triggers and how to understand triggers in human psychology. But first of all, what is the distraction? I mean, what? Yeah. How are we pulled away so easily in life and what causes that.
00:21:01:09 - 00:21:19:00
Speaker 2
Absolutely. Yeah. So so hooked just to transition here. So hooked is about how do we build good habits in Distractible is about how do we break bad habits. Right. They're compliments and there's many similar or similar, pieces of consumer psychology that transfer over because, look, I'm on the inside, right? I know how these companies get you hooked.
00:21:19:00 - 00:21:40:11
Speaker 2
I wrote the book on it. And so when I faced distraction in my own life, I was looking for a solution. And the solutions I found out there. And, you know, in terms of the other books on this topic of distraction and focus and productivity, they all kind of say the same thing. They're written by some academic professor who has tenure, who basically the advice is will stop using technology, stop checking email.
00:21:40:13 - 00:22:03:10
Speaker 2
Thanks, stupid. That's nice for you to say because you've got tenure. But most of us would get fired if we stopped using these tools. And so what I wanted to do is to have a tech positive approach. How can we use these tools as opposed to letting these tools use us, starting with the fact that distraction is much bigger than just our technology, because we know that Plato, 2500 years ago, was complaining about how distracted people were, right?
00:22:03:10 - 00:22:21:15
Speaker 2
He called it in the Greek across here, the tendency to do things against our better interest. So if people were complaining about technology 2500 years before the internet, it can't be technology's fault. There has to be something deeper in our psychology that leads us to get distracted. And the best place to start is exactly what you said. Let's start with the definition, right?
00:22:21:15 - 00:22:39:00
Speaker 2
What is a distraction? The best way to understand what a distraction is is to understand what it is not. What's the opposite of distraction? If you ask most people what's the opposite of distraction? They'll tell you it's focus, right? I don't want to be distracted. I want to be focused. Not exactly right. The opposite of distraction is not focus.
00:22:39:00 - 00:23:04:02
Speaker 2
The opposite of distraction is traction. Of course it is. Look at both words. Traction and distraction. They're very clear opposites. Both words come from the same Latin root trocar, which means to pull. And they both end in the same six letter word action that spells action, reminding us that distraction is not something that happens to us. It is an action that we ourselves take.
00:23:04:04 - 00:23:25:15
Speaker 2
So traction, by definition, is any action that pulls you towards what you said you were going to do. Things you do with intent, things that move you closer to your values and help you become the kind of person you want to become. Those are acts of traction. The opposite distraction is any action that pulls you away from what you said you were going to do, further from your values, further away from becoming the person you want to become.
00:23:25:17 - 00:23:47:10
Speaker 2
So this isn't just semantics. This is super important because I would argue the difference between traction and distraction is one word, and that one word is intent. As Dorothy Parker said, the time you plan to waste is not wasted. Time. So we need to stop moralizing and medical izing using technology, right? Oh, technology is melting your brain. Stop using technology.
00:23:47:12 - 00:24:09:18
Speaker 2
you know, video games are bad for you. Social media is rotting your brain. It's all rubbish. It's silly. Now, should there be some special protections for children? Yes, absolutely. We can talk about that later. But for grown adults, it's a personal responsibility issue. And what we need to do is to realize that there's nothing wrong with playing video games or watching Netflix or going on social media if you do it on your schedule, not someone else's.
00:24:09:20 - 00:24:35:21
Speaker 2
Conversely, the much more dangerous type of distraction, you know, people think, oh, it's social media, it's video games. No, no, no, no. The worst distraction is a distraction you don't even realize is distracting you. I'll give you a perfect example. Before I wrote this book, with which, by the way, took me five years to write because I kept getting distracted until I learned these techniques for myself, I would every day I would sit down on my desk and I would say, okay, I've got a bunch to do here.
00:24:35:21 - 00:24:45:18
Speaker 2
Here's my to do list. By the way, we can talk about why to do lists are one of the worst things you can do for your personal productivity. We can get back to that later. I would sit down on my desk and say, oh, I've got that big project I need to I need to get to work on that.
00:24:45:18 - 00:25:11:02
Speaker 2
I'm not going to get distracted. I'm going to get started. Here I go right now. But first let me check email. Right. How often does that happens? Let me just scroll that slack channel. Right. Well, let me just read some industry news because you know, that's that's part of my job. I gotta do that. But if that is not what you said you were going to do in advance, that is just as much of a distraction as going on Candy Crush or Facebook or whatever, because that's not what you said you were gonna do in advance.
00:25:11:02 - 00:25:28:04
Speaker 2
But of course, we justify that to ourselves, so. Oh, I'll just check some email for a bit, as opposed to working on a big project because it's a work related task. So it's not a distraction. No, but yes, that is the most dangerous kind of distraction, because you don't even realize that you've been taken off track. And so it's so important to distinguish between traction and distraction.
00:25:28:04 - 00:25:33:05
Speaker 2
Traction is anything you really said you were going to do in advance. Distraction is everything else.
00:25:33:07 - 00:25:45:00
Speaker 1
Wow. I mean, that's incredibly powerful. And a lot of people are sitting here holding up the mirror, going, what did I just put myself through here a little bit of vulnerability, folks.
00:25:45:02 - 00:25:59:17
Speaker 2
Yeah. And by the way, I wrote this book for me. So I'm not blaming and shaming here that I wrote that. I'm so glad that the book has sold as many copies. It has. We topped a million copies between both books, but let me tell you, I write my books for me, first and foremost. I needed this in my own life, so I.
00:25:59:17 - 00:26:01:18
Speaker 2
I've been there.
00:26:01:20 - 00:26:16:03
Speaker 1
All right. Talk to us a little bit about management of distraction. I mean, how do how do we deal with it? I mean, you talk about time management, technology management, things like that. Give us a flyover of how do we how do we manage.
00:26:16:03 - 00:26:35:23
Speaker 2
Yeah. So what do we do with it. So okay so let's go back to our model. We've got traction. We've got distraction. Now let's go back to our friends. The triggers. So right triggers are what prompts us to take these actions. So we've got these two kinds of triggers. We've got the external triggers. Again these are the pings, the dings, the rings, all these things in our outside environment that can lead us to attraction or distraction.
00:26:36:01 - 00:26:56:21
Speaker 2
But those only account for 10% of our distractions. Literally, we do these time studies to figure out why people check their phones, and it turns out only 10% of the time. Is it because of a pending or ring 90% of the time that you get distracted? It's not because of what's happening outside of you. It's not an external trigger 90% of time, it's an internal trigger.
00:26:57:02 - 00:27:19:11
Speaker 2
Again, back to these uncomfortable emotional states loneliness, fatigue, uncertainty, anxiety that is the source of 90% of our internal triggers that lead towards distraction. So what this means, therefore, that if if we know, I actually let me back up for a second before we get into, okay, why do we get distracted? What do we do about it? Let's ask ourselves, why do we do anything and everything right?
00:27:19:11 - 00:27:45:13
Speaker 2
What's the seat of human motivation? It turns out that all human motivation, it's not about carrots and sticks. Turns out all human motivation is is only about one thing. And that is the desire to escape discomfort. Even wanting to feel good. Right? Hunger, lusting, desire. Even wanting the pleasure is itself psychologically destabilizing. In many ways. The carrot is the stick.
00:27:45:15 - 00:28:11:08
Speaker 2
Does that make sense? The carrot is the stick, right? The desire for something good is uncomfortable. So if all human behavior, all human behavior is spurred by a desire to escape discomfort, that must therefore mean that time management is pain management. Weight management is pain management. Money management is pain management because all human behavior is about the desire to escape discomfort.
00:28:11:09 - 00:28:31:03
Speaker 2
So distraction is not a moral failing. It's not that there's anything wrong with you. Your brain isn't broken. It's simply we haven't learned the skills to deal with that discomfort in a healthy way. And so what we learn is that high performers in every field business, the arts, sports doesn't matter. High performers, they feel the same internal triggers.
00:28:31:03 - 00:28:52:10
Speaker 2
They also feel insecure and lonesome and bored and they feel the same things everybody else does. But they deal with those internal triggers differently. They use those internal triggers as rocket fuel to propel them towards traction. Whereas what most people do, they every time they feel uncomfortable, they try to escape it. Right? They too much news, too much booze, too much football, too much Facebook.
00:28:52:10 - 00:29:12:11
Speaker 2
They always look for a way to escape that discomfort, which is the ultimate source of that, that that distraction. And if you don't deal with the source of the problem, of course you can't fix it. So step number one is to master your internal triggers or they will become your master. So there's a dozen different techniques I put in the book of, you know, tools in your toolkit that you can use right away.
00:29:12:17 - 00:29:29:23
Speaker 2
Any time you feel that discomfort. And for most people, step one is recognizing that that's why you're getting distracted, right? If you can't have a conversation with somebody without checking your phone every five minutes, it ain't the phone, right? There's something you are escaping. If you can't sit at your desk and do your work properly without thinking, what about email?
00:29:29:23 - 00:29:50:13
Speaker 2
What about slack? What about, that's not the technology's fault. There's a feeling that you don't know how to cope with in a healthy manner. So step number one is mastering internal triggers. Step number two is making time for traction. It's amazing how many people, when I ask them, hey, what did you get distracted from? They say, oh, I have so much to do.
00:29:50:13 - 00:30:07:15
Speaker 2
And this on Twitter my boss wanted this, my kids want that. And so many things going on. I said, yeah, but what did you get distracted from? Show me your calendar. Let's see that schedule. You know what's on their schedule? Nothing. Right? They might have a to do list that's a mile long. And there's many reasons why to do list are awful.
00:30:07:17 - 00:30:26:03
Speaker 2
But I need to see your schedule. Because again, if you can't tell me what is traction, you can't show me distraction. Right? So we have to start planning our day, and all of that has to be done by turning our values into time. And I we could talk about exactly how to do that. The third step is to hack back the external triggers.
00:30:26:03 - 00:30:43:20
Speaker 2
You know, those paintings and rings? That's kindergarten stuff. We can do that. That's it takes about one page of my book to make your phone, your computer into an indestructible technology very easy. People complain about a lot. It takes maybe 30 minutes. The much bigger sources of these external triggers are meetings, stupid meetings that didn't need to be called right.
00:30:44:00 - 00:31:00:11
Speaker 2
Emails that didn't need to be sent. Our kids. We love our kids, but they can be a huge source of distraction. So I systematically go through and show you, how do you hack back every single one of these external triggers? And then finally, the fourth step is preventing distraction with pacts. So this is where we erect a firewall against distraction.
00:31:00:17 - 00:31:13:07
Speaker 2
And so with these four strategies this is how we do it. Master internal triggers, make time for traction, hack back external triggers and prevent distraction with packs. If you follow these four strategies, I guarantee you you will become indestructible.
00:31:13:09 - 00:31:34:18
Speaker 1
This is so cool to listen to because, we used to have a meeting problem at my last company. everybody would go on your calendar and go, oh, I have time for a meeting. And they would schedule meetings. And then all the time I told my assistant block when I went to have meetings, which was only two days a week during certain time blocks, and everybody started coming to me going, I can't get you in my meeting.
00:31:34:18 - 00:31:51:16
Speaker 1
I'm like, that's because your meeting is not at the right time for me. so I would use that meet. I would have that meeting time and event. Eventually everybody figured out, oh, if we want to add them in a meeting, we need to have the meeting at this time. And it was pacts and rules around when I would go to meetings.
00:31:51:18 - 00:32:00:18
Speaker 1
It was perfect. I eliminated meetings three days of the week in the company by doing that, and it worked out. So, so well to help love it. Activity.
00:32:00:20 - 00:32:18:06
Speaker 2
So yeah. Yeah. And there's and I know it's there's one thing to be the boss and say, hey, this is when I have time for meetings. I think a lot of people struggle with is, hey, look, I'm not the boss. I can't set those rules. What do I do them? Well, let me just give you. Can I give you two very quick tips for those listening of what I recommend?
00:32:18:08 - 00:32:43:20
Speaker 2
Firstly, we need to recognize there's a whole section in in Distractible, by the way, on how to build an indestructible workplace, how to build a distractible company. And part of it is, is adopting these new practices and realizing that distraction at work. Right. If you find that your colleagues, your, your employees, your boss, if everybody is distracted all the time, if they're constant going from one thing to the next and they can't seem to focus on getting their work done, that is not a technology problem.
00:32:43:20 - 00:33:09:21
Speaker 2
That is a culture problem. Distraction is a symptom of dysfunction for the individual as well as for the organization. Distraction is a symptom of dysfunction. It's the it's the it's the cultural, inability to deal with the problem. So if you can't raise your hand and say, hey, you know what? I can't do my best work if I'm constantly pulled into meetings and and WhatsApp and slack and email, if I'm constantly expected to respond all the time, I can't do my freaking work.
00:33:09:23 - 00:33:27:21
Speaker 2
If you can't raise your hand and say, hey, I got this problem without fear of getting fired, that is the problem, right? It's a culture problem. And so that's what I found in my research around these companies that are indestructible. Is that they have they give employees the right to talk about this problem so that they can fix it, just like any other business challenge.
00:33:27:23 - 00:33:45:22
Speaker 2
So meetings are a big one, right? All the time. People say, well, what do I do about these stupid meetings on my calendar that I can't get off? There's two things that that need to be implemented. One, very simple. I almost feel embarrassed saying it, but 80% of meetings have no agenda. 80% of meetings have no agenda. What?
00:33:45:22 - 00:34:03:01
Speaker 2
I learned this in ninth grade student council. If you have a meeting, you have to have an agenda. We don't just get together to chit chat, okay? And the reason this happens all the time is because people don't understand what is the point of a meeting nobody taught us, why do we have meetings? What's the point? The purpose of a meeting is one thing.
00:34:03:03 - 00:34:18:14
Speaker 2
It's not to socialize. That's a happy hour. It's not to brainstorm either. This is a big one. People say, oh, let's get together and brainstorm. You know what the optimal size atom of a brainstorming session is? What's the optimal number of people you want in a room for a brainstorming session? Take a guess.
00:34:18:16 - 00:34:19:23
Speaker 1
two.
00:34:20:01 - 00:34:38:19
Speaker 2
Exactly. That's right. Bingo. Two or less. Most people say oh, eight people. It seems like a good number. No, anything more than two people becomes an opportunity for the loudest, the highest paid person to dominate the meeting. So what you want to do as the person who calls the meeting is to say, hey, I have this question. Here's what I'm working on.
00:34:38:21 - 00:34:55:13
Speaker 2
Please give me your feedback. Maybe take 30 minutes this week. Schedule those 30 minutes, think about this problem and send me your feedback. But let them brainstorm on their own and send you that feedback asynchronously because the purpose of a meeting is not brainstorming. The purpose of a meeting is one thing, and that one thing is to gain consensus.
00:34:55:15 - 00:35:18:19
Speaker 2
That's it. The purpose of a business meeting is to gain consensus. We're not talking about social hour. We're not talking about brainstorming. We're talking about a meeting. Gain consensus. So no agenda, no meeting. Second thing is to circulate what's called a briefing document. A briefing document says, hey, if you want to have a meeting, if you want to take people's time and we know time is money, and if you think about what an hourly basis would take to get all those people in a room, it's very, very expensive.
00:35:18:23 - 00:35:40:00
Speaker 2
So if you're going to do that, you have to submit a briefing document. So the person who wants to call the meeting says, here's the problem, here's the research. I did my homework, here's the recommended course of action. And then we sit down and we make sure that we brief each other on on this, the purpose of the meeting and what consensus we have to gain so that we have the opportunity to say, hey, I think you forgot this.
00:35:40:00 - 00:36:00:23
Speaker 2
And what about that? Okay, now we're going to decide to move forward. By the way, I did not make this up. This is what built Amazon. Amazon does this until this very day. They start every meeting with a 20 minute, little time block to read over these briefing documents. And so those two things add that bit of friction so that we make sure that only the most essential meetings get on our calendars.
00:36:01:01 - 00:36:06:14
Speaker 1
Awesome. I love this near. Where can we find more information about you and your books?
00:36:06:16 - 00:36:27:19
Speaker 2
Sure thing. So my website is called Near and Far and Near Us, but like my first name near and far.com. And that's my blog where I'm writing about, my next book as well, that it'll be out in a few years, but you can kind of follow along. and then my two books, my first book is Hooked How to Build Habit Forming Products, and the second book is called Indestructible How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life.
00:36:27:21 - 00:36:51:07
Speaker 1
Awesome. Near this has just been a masterclass on the getting into the right habits and out of the wrong ones and becoming indestructible. I love these topics. I love the psychology behind them. You're really masterful at how you present this. So, we really appreciate all that you do for making us more efficient and more effective in our jobs and really in our lives.
00:36:51:09 - 00:36:57:07
Speaker 1
Near. I have a question. I ask all the amazing leaders on start with a win and that's how do you start your day with a win?
00:36:57:09 - 00:37:17:09
Speaker 2
Yeah. So the way I start my day with a win is by knowing what I want to do in my day. So having a timebox calendar that I say, this is what I want to do today based on my values. I think very few people have ever experienced the joy, the bliss of saying this is what I said I was going to do, and I did it.
00:37:17:11 - 00:37:26:01
Speaker 2
It's so wonderful. And so that to me is starting my day with the win is having my Timebox calendar ready to know how I can live my day according to my values.
00:37:26:03 - 00:37:41:05
Speaker 1
Awesome! And you can find out more about the time Timebox calendar concept in NIRs books, and I encourage you to check those out. Also, check them out at near and far.com near. Thanks for all you do and thanks for being. I'm start with a win.